Thinking Machines open sources first multimodal language model, Inkling, focused on low cost and 'resistance to censorship'

Thinking Machines, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, released Inkling, a 975B-parameter multimodal Mixture-of-Experts model under the Apache 2.0 license. The company says Inkling performs strongly on software engineering and voice benchmarks, supports text, image, and audio reasoning, and is designed to answer more directly on sensitive topics. A smaller 276B-parameter Inkling-Small preview targets lower-latency and lower-cost deployments.

Inkling strengthens the shift toward open-weight enterprise AI, where companies want models they can customize, self-host, and govern outside closed frontier platforms. Its emphasis on controllable reasoning cost and resistance to censorship suggests growing demand for models that balance performance, transparency, and operational control. The release also raises competitive pressure on other U.S. open model providers as enterprises evaluate alternatives to proprietary APIs.